Home Secretary Theresa May insists the Government is working hard to tackle immigration, after a survey revealed the majority of voters want to see "drastic action" taken on the issue.

A poll for Sky News found more than two thirds of people in Britain think the UK population is too high, and 67% think the Government's attempt to cut migration to 100,000 people a year is not enough.

But Theresa May said the Government was already taking action to limit migrants' access to benefits, and said it understood people's concerns about the pressure immigration has put on public services, jobs and wages.

The survey on immigration also found that 27% of people think immigration has brought no positive benefits to Britain at all over the last decade, and more than half would be more likely to vote for a political party which pledged to reduce immigration "significantly".

But there seemed to be a discrepancy between how people felt about immigration, and the actual effect it had on them.

Almost three quarters of people who live in the countryside said they thought drastic action was needed, but this figure was just 53% in urban areas.

And 71% of people who don't know any immigrants well said they would support drastic action to reduce immigration, compared with 58% of those who said they knew immigrants well.

May denied that "scaremongering" by the Government was to blame for this.

Chancellor George Osborne also stressed the Government's commitment to cut immigration.

He said it had "got a grip" on the situation at the country's border controls, and had imposed new immigration limits.